New York's floating food garden will leave you speechless

In a city that is currently incapable of providing its own comprehensive food supply, one group of creative individuals is hoping to change that by growing food in the most unlikely of public spaces in New York, on the water.

Mary Mattingly is the creative starting point for Swale, a food barge on the water at New York's Brooklyn Bridge Park (pier 6). It grew out of the idea that, just like fresh water, access to food should be a basic human right.

Mattingly understood however, that not everyone has the space to grow their own food, much less the skills and capability. On top of that, current rules in the New York don't allow people to grow food in public spaces. But the Swale project found a loophole to get around that and developed a barge that not only can be moved from place to place to teach people skills and get them involved, it neatly bypasses the public space issue – because there's no rules against growing food on the water.

Swale, which means 'a low or hollow place, especially a marshy depression between ridges', is just the kind of creative thinking around food that we love at 9Kitchen, and it's described as a floating food garden.

Check out the clip above to see the flourishing barge in action and to hear what Mattingly has to say about the project. It looks pretty tasty to us, as well as being a downright clever and beautiful way to use up an old barge.

"Right now almost all our food from NY city comes from outside," says the founder and artist in the introduction to the video. "It's not as fresh because of that and it's much more expensive. We also have the output [that comes with that] so all of the garbage that's created from the packaging coming into the city."

Mattingly saw this as a problem that could be solved by growing food within New York, and the food garden barge was her unique answer to the lack of space.

We have to say it looks pretty idyllic and is a perfect way to think outside the food production box. We can only hope that we see more of it.

Check out the full video here to find out more. And the broader thinking behind Swale is to encourage people to care about plants just as a starting point for greater awareness.

"Then they'll start to care about soil, and water and all those things come up when we think about picking food ourselves."